Longfellow's Unique American Hero in Evangeline

Longfellow's Unique American hero in Evangeline

Abstract: Longfellow's portrayal of the American Adam is set apart in that he does not praise this character as a role model for others. The concept of the American Adam is seen in a different light through the depiction of Basil in the narrative poem Evangeline.

R.W.B. Lewis explores the quest of the writers of the American Renaissance to

create a literature that is uniquely American in his 1955 text, The American

Adam: Innocence, Tragedy, and Tradition in the Nineteenth Century. This is

accomplished through the image of "the authentic American as a figure of heroic

innocence and vast potentialities, poised at the start of a new history" (Lewis

1). David S. Reynolds explains that these writers are working under the

influence of "classic themes and devices" and producing "truly American texts"

(5). Lewis convincingly argues "that the new hero" is "most easily identified

with Adam before the Fall" (5). Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, Nathaniel

Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, and the works of several others of the period

are tied to the creation of this new Adam, but the contribution of Henry

Wadsworth Longfellow is largely neglected. Longfellow's portrayal of the

American Adam is set apart in that he does not praise this character as a role

model for others. The concept of the American Adam is seen in a different light

through the depiction of Basil in the narrative poem Evangeline.

Evangeline is the tale of an Acadian woman's journey to find her lost lover

after her people are exiled from their native Nova Scotia. Longfellow describes

the state of the Acadians after this exile early in the second part of the poem:

Far asunder, on separate coasts, the Acadians landed;

Scattered were they, like flakes of snow, when the wind from the northeast

Strikes aslant though the fogs that darken the Banks of Newfoundland.

Friendless, homeless, hopeless, they wandered from city to city [. . .].

(38-39)

These lines reveal that the Acadians represent a people forced to start their

lives anew in a land that is completely foreign to them.